Surfing while blind.
Jeremy Keith links to some stunningly ill-advised comments on the Sitepoint forums and Techcrunch.
Reasonable people can disagree whether and to what degree accessibility on sites that provide services to the public should be a legal requirement. Reasonable people cannot disagree whether blind folks use e-commerce websites without the help of a sighted friend, are able to complete credit card transactions or read image captions. Affirming the contrary is a sign of ignorance so deep that it is indistinguishable from malice. I just cringe and hope that none of my visually impaired acquaintances will come across these chaps — but then, they have, hundreds of times.
Moreover, anyone with at least a shred of good sense will immediately grasp the benefit a disabled person can draw from shopping online and having the stuff delivered. Compared to navigating a supermarket, using a well-implemented online search is child’s play; or could be: if the technology was up to scratch, and available.
A last point. In the UK, there are legal requirements on Web accessibility. I’m no accessibility specialist, so I won’t pretend to have an in-depth knowledge of the full rule set. However, when I moved to this country last year, one thing stood out: the functionality and Web standards compliance of the local government sites I went to go get my bearings in this new bureaucracy. Legal obligations can overshoot their target and lead to ludicrous situations; if well-designed, though, they also can influence an industry for the better.
chris @ October 15, 2007